Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/579

Rh portrait by Rembrandt. Although its authenticity has been questioned, it is the only portrait known of Swammerdam.

He was born in 1637, nine years after Malpighi. His father, an apothecary of Amsterdam, had a taste for collecting, which was shared

by many of his fellow-townsmen. "The vast commerce and extended colonial empire of the Holland of that day fostered the formation of private museums." The elder Swammerdam had the finest and most